Nothing Else Matters
by Senko Wakimarin
Summary: A spider is a spider, no matter what it weaves itself. And it is easily crushed." Sometimes the things we say come to haunt us, awake or asleep.
1. Sad But True

Nothing Else Matters

Chapter One: Sad But True

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_This one's for you, Ms. Katherine._

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Everyone makes mistakes. This I forced myself to accept early in life, for if I believed myself incapable of mistakes, I would have gone mad.

It feels strange to say that now. To admit I might have gone mad.

There were times when I thought Legato was a mistake I made. He was a distraction to me. Time could pass with him in my presence without my ever noticing. It agitated me, and because he understood this, he did not seek my attention very often.

He was always different from my experience of humans. For one thing, he was quiet. I have always known humans to be noisy; from the way they walk to the volume of their talking, humans are a loud bunch. Except Legato, who moved like a cat, booted feet padding as softly as they did when bare. When he spoke, it was careful and muted, but always dignified- even when he spoke to me.

Clever and eloquent, conversation with Legato could be surprisingly pleasant. I expected him to grow out of his devotion to me, to turn on me and seek self-sufficiency in the normal course of human nature. I asked him once if this would happen, and he simply stared at me for a moment, eyes wide like I had caught him off guard. "Never, Master," he said softly, looking away.

I never got used to that. That he was, with me at least, shy. He would look at me directly in silence, but when he spoke, his eyes would shift to the side or his head would tilt down. If I forced him to look at me while we spoke, his face would often color just slightly. He behaved like a man in the presence of something holy. To him, I suppose that was the case.

Of course, I must admit that I liked the effect I had on him. I have always enjoyed being in charge and I have always appreciated obedience.

He did everything I ever asked of him, no matter his opinion on the subject. He was loyal to a fault, and when he made a mistake he accepted punishment without argument. Even when I expected him to object to something, he would perhaps hesitate for a moment before simply doing it.

Legato lacked the sexual appetite I associated with other humans. The gunslingers in his little gang were some of the worst examples of mankind, controlled by vices like greed and lust and pride; he stood out from them and above them not just by rank or association to me, but because he was free from these things. To look at him, to observe him, one might think him free from all desire. He could sit beside his radio, listening to music play softly and keep himself so still and so quiet it appeared he had fallen asleep. Most people, of course, did not know him well enough to know that; aside from his devotion to me; he was as self consumed as they came.

Many who followed him assumed he was in love with me, and he was. But he had no desire to be bedded by me. I assume the desire for sex was taken from him before I allowed him to follow me. His… unfortunate circumstance before I stumbled upon him certainly contributed to his penchant for stillness- if he was still, people might take no notice of him.

My sexual involvement with him started as a lark. It was something of a personal joke to me, when I realized that he was in love with me. (Vash asks me if it made me angry at first, that a human would fall in love with me. It didn't. I can't say I was truly flattered- he was of course only a human- but I wasn't angry by any means.) Naturally, I knew he had something of an aversion to sex, but I also knew he did everything I asked without question, and I was curious as to what his response would be.

He came to my room promptly when summoned, as always he did, and I told him to take his clothes off. His eyes widened; I can still remember how bright the gold in them seemed in the dimness. When his lips parted, I expected him to object… and to my surprise, he simply let out his breath in a sigh, his hands going to the hem of his shirt. He stripped artlessly, removing his clothing in an almost economical way- quickly and efficiently.

Plants were genetically designed to appear as idealized humans. We look for the same things as humans do regarding appearance and sexual attraction. As a Plant I can still look at a human and find them comely. Legato was nineteen that first time; long limbed and fine boned, with sun-darkened flesh and longish azure hair. I was unsurprised to find that he was quite lovely when I took the time to look at him.

I told him to lie down on the bed, and he did. There was no pause, not even the moment's hesitation I expected- he moved across the room in three long steps and folded himself down onto the bed near where I sat. He did not flinch when I touched him, and when I kissed him he closed his eyes and hummed softly. When I persisted, he fell into a rhythm, reciprocating with a shyness that was somehow becoming. (He would tell me later that, as far as kissing went, most of his clients hadn't been interested. _Did _that_ bother you_, Vash asks me, and of course it did. In the vague way that it has always bothered me when something of _mine_ is soiled.)

There are moments when his telepathy was an irritant. Playing chess, for example, was a futile endeavor, for though he did not consciously try to cheat, his mind would pluck images from mine of its own accord.

In sex, however, the telepathy was a blessing. He was able to read exactly what I wanted and give it to me before I even realized the idea had formed, making the experience one pleasurable for mind and body.

Not knowing this that first time made the act all the more spectacular. When I opened my shirt, he greedily reached beneath the fabric, touching my flesh with warm hands exactly as I had hoped but surprising me nonetheless. I had no more than a passing thought when he broke our kiss, running his lips in surprisingly light kisses down my neck, burying his face I the crook of my shoulder.

Somehow I was divested of my clothing, straddling Legato's waist, curving over his so as much of our flesh could meet as possible. His hands were resting on my hips, cradling them carefully even as his own rose up slightly from the bed to grind against mine. His gilded gaze met mine, one eyebrow raised in a question I could only guess at. Curiosity, I suppose, bade me nod my permission, and he suddenly and smoothly reversed our positions. Before I could more than guess at what he had in mind (and of course, had pulled from the vast supply of inappropriate fantasies in my own head) he had slid from the bed, kneeling there and arching over to take me into his mouth.

It can never be said that Legato was unselfish or lacked control in my presence. He knew exactly what he was doing, and though the compromising position he put me in was mind-blowingly pleasant, it was still _compromising_. I came before I realized what he was doing and why. And it was so clever, the seamless combination of willing lover and self-serving trickery. He did not yet want to have sex with me, but neither was he willing to disappoint me if that was what I wanted. So he gave me satisfaction without crossing his own boundaries.

He left me there, naked and wondering at what had happened. Simply got up, pulled his trousers on and left. It was oddly business like, and I didn't appreciate that. I didn't want him as a whore, I decided, and would break him of that sort of habit. He was long gone before I realized that I hadn't really gotten what I had wanted from him.

All I could do- can do now, thinking of it- was smile slightly. I couldn't bring myself to be annoyed when I realized what he had done. Later I would go to him, catching him off guard in his quarters. He was reading a copy of Nietzsche, one that had seen better days, and I tore it out of his hands even as he was trying to set it down. Pinned on his own small mattress, I gave him no escape route. He spread his legs for me willingly, blushing despite his long lost innocence, and when I entered him the first time, his head cracked into the wall behind him. It was amazing; our minds linked as our bodies did, letting us feel each other's desire and pleasure. At first I fought it, disliking the intimacy it implied, but it was impossible to block without ending the physical end of our contact.

He came surprisingly quickly, closing his eyes and _moaning_- the sound was one I previously believed could only be made intentionally, a harlot's trick to gratify his lover. From him, in that moment, it was entirely genuine, followed by a gasp for breath and (amusingly) a breathy apology. Utterly unnecessary, as his climax heralded my own, but amazingly endearing nonetheless.

There was something about him that made me obsessive. I wanted something from him that I never really got. He trusted me implicitly, gave me everything he knew how. But there was always a part of him missing, a piece of himself that he kept curled up and buried deep inside, far away from me. A sense of introspection that separated us even at our closest. At first, I thought that in sex- which quickly went from a lark to a lusty fixation- I could tease that part of him to the surface.

After that first time with him, there was a month where we couldn't so much as pass each other in a corridor than my mind ran off on a debased fieldtrip of fantasy. What I wanted to do to him, where, with what. Were we in the presence of someone else, he would bravely disregard the smut I knew he could hear. If we were in private, he waited for a physical invitation before picking a place to start.

Even when we weren't having sex- and eventually, the lust _did_ cool off- there was a part of Legato that belonged to him and no one else. It wasn't a retreat he went to escape a moment he didn't enjoy; it was a part of his mind's make up. He lived separate and beyond everyone around him, in a very small and selfish world. This is honesty speaking, not a slight against him. His world revolved around making me happy, and making himself comfortable. Comfort, for him, was as close to happy as he needed.

I knew this was his little world, and for the most part I let it be. But there were times when it drove me mad. It would catch me off guard all at once at the most inopportune moments, how far from me he was even when we were physically so close. Especially when we were physically close. Sensitive to me as he was, he could feel my emotions shift as soon as I could, and in his little world he only closed himself in tighter and weathered the storm of my anger. He never moved to defend himself, never spoke against anything I might say in my rage- he would become very still, and wait. The soothed and angered me by turns. Soothed because I could see this was really him, and he would remain no matter what; angered because he would never change.

He never did change. Yes, this upsets me. Yes I wish I had understood what it meant. No I would never change what I did, what we… experienced together. I cannot say we ever shared anything, because we lived in such vastly different lives.

The last night we were together, he lay beside me, his eyes closed but nowhere close to sleep. He was listening to me talk, ramble really, and nodding in time. I bantered about loyalty and trust, betrayal and punishment, spiders and butterflies, and all the things that wove my logical dissent toward the current state of the world.

"Did you know there are spiders who spin themselves wings and fly, Master," he asked me absently, when I lapsed into silence. I raised myself on one elbow and looked down at him, interested and amused.

He did not continue, and so I prodded. "Really," I queried, leaning in close enough that the ghost of a word was more a brush of my lips against his ear.

I had expected to distract him, but I was of course disappointed. "Really," he confirmed, opening his eyes to stared at the ceiling. His head tilted ever-so-slightly away from me, allowing me room to kiss at his neck and jaw just the way I had been thinking of. "They're not real wings of course; more like balloons than anything. They catch the breeze and glide, wingless. Insidious."

Pausing, I felt my lips pull down in a frown. It was a reaction to his emotions, which I could still feel playing through our link. "This troubles you, does it?" I could hardly help it if my voice was a little harsh, a little mocking. Since I couldn't seem to help voicing my interest, this was my way of distancing myself from him.

"Yes. It does."

Human means of communication often rely heavily on eye contact. It is important; conveying emotion and intent, a visual cue to what is meant by the noise leaving their mouths. But Legato has always been different from normal humans, and he closed his eyes against mine, separating us that much further. "It's as if… they are discontented with their place, their nature- to be earthbound and remain in their webs. And so they try to adopt the nature of another creature, one better suited to life than they."

Unable to help myself, I laughed. "A spider is a spider, no matter what it weaves itself. And it is easily crushed." Silence played out between us, broken only by the whisper of limps moving against the sheets as we left our thoughts aside for the distractions of the flesh. Afterward, I left him curled against me for a moment. There was something comforting about his cheek resting against my shoulder, the warmth of his breath on my neck. If I had known then what I know now I would call that deep comfort a form of premonition. Of course, if I had known what I know now, I would have chosen my words more carefully earlier.

"You'll be gone in the morning, correct? You and the Hornfreak both?"

He nodded quietly, disengaging his legs from the tangle we had made. "To L.R. Bright and early to set up the stage."

My hand on his back kept him from rolling away from me. I wanted to keep the feeling of warmth for a moment longer. "You have a plan?"

"Yes, Master. Midvalley knows it as well." An image flashed in his mind of the Hornfreak, lips on his instrument, playing at his window. There was a glimmer down the man's cheek that could have been a trick of the moon light or perhaps a tear. A whisper of a name echoed in Legato's mind, one I did not at the time recognize. A priest's name. I was surprised to feel something like pity from Legato attached to this memory. "He is more than willing to go. He has decided there is nothing better in the world than seeing your last plans set in motion."

A short stretch of silence followed, after which I finally relinquished my hold on him and slipped from his bed. "You're entirely prepared for this, then?"

Once again, his eyes were closed, but he smiled blindly at the ceiling. "Of course, Master. I have been for a long time. You have just given all the confirmation I could even need that I've made the right plans."

I thought he was referring to sex- I had no clue otherwise. His mind was already drifting toward sleep, and I disregarded the mental glimpse I saw of a field awash with tiny parachuting spiders, caught by children and crushed. I laughed easily, as I often could after a night with him. "Very good. Just be sure it pulls through."

He laughed, rolling over, unknowingly broadcasting the imaged of a small blonde child prying the legs off a dying arachnid. "It will, Master. For you." He sighed, the dreamy sound of a contented lover. "Nothing else matters."

Vash asks if it burns me to realize now what all this- what I thought of as bedroom babble- means. What Legato was telling me, or was trying to ask me.

I tell him it doesn't. I tell him Legato knew what he was doing and that in my heart I always knew it was one or the other, my brother or my servant. I tell him that it did upset me at first, to be suddenly alone, without any one, and that in my anger I lashed out at him- but I tell him not to mistake that for anything else. I have always loved my brother more than anything in the world; I tried to change the whole of everything just to create a world where I thought he would be safe. No matter how he shunned me, no matter what anger exists between us, I have always loved him.

What I don't tell him is that I go to bed every night knowing my sheets will be cold- clean and the bed made, but it's all mechanical and frigid. Knowing I will sleep alone this night and every night after. That I fall asleep knowing I will never feel a warm check pressed perfectly to my shoulder, or wake up to find myself curled around another's body like a Sister around her orb. Fitting so well together.

What I don't tell Vash is that I know exactly what Legato was trying to say in our last conversation. The affirmation he was seeking, something to tell him that, no matter how he changed in life, he would always be as detestable as the next human. To know that I wouldn't flinch to see him crushed like all the rest.

I don't tell him that I remember the priest's name now and why the Hornfreak cried when he heard Chapel's prodigy was dead. I don't tell Vash that I could care less, except that Legato had grown to almost _like_ the Hornfreak and that in his strange inhuman way, he pitied the man for his loss. And had used that loss to ensure that the Hornfreak would stand with him in L.R., knowing that he would die and so would his boss.

These things I don't tell Vash because I know they would hurt his heart to hear.

What I don't tell Vash because I can't let it leave my own aching chest is that it does burn. It's like acid in my veins every night, just laying down in the empty bed that will never be full again. Because every night goes back to that night; back to making love (can I call it that if I didn't love him then?) and then whispering. Back to Legato asking if I knew he was trying to weave himself wings so he could fly with the other butterflies for me. Back to the Hornfreak alone on the other end of the house, playing blues for the dead while I told Legato he would never change, would always just be a spider, easy to crush and unmourned in death.

What I don't tell Vash, because it might kill us both to admit, is that I wake up every morning with salt in my eyes from dried tears, hearing the echo of a dream of Legato telling me Nothing else matters- nothing but me and what I wanted at a time when I didn't know what I could have.


	2. Harvester of Sorrow

Nothing Else Matters

Chapter Two: Harvester of Sorrow

A monster is what you make it. Humans make all sorts of monsters for themselves; things that lurk in the dark and swell behind closed eyes. They create private hells, each as unique and unimportant as snowflakes. The human psyche seems to almost require this dark imagining; there is a sort of comfort in acknowledging the worst parts of one's self. In the belief that you know how awful you can be.

Many humans seem to think they know the depth of their own souls and the shades of their own sins. But it is human nature too, to tuck the very darkest parts of themselves away in shallow graves of the mind, to rot and fester. Most humans bury those things just small enough, or deep enough, that their mind never feels the adverse reactions of this psychological rot.

Those who do not turn to madness. Those who let the rot spread from simple neurosis to violence- the rapists, the murderers; the Damned- those are the ones who end up stalking the nights of the world, Boogey Men in the flesh. They become the monsters who torture children for the chance at glimpsing some 'truth' that is really a fleeting hope they never quite grasped. They become the men who beat children for nothing more than curiosity, who hurt them in worse ways simply because they are big and their victims small.

They become the megalomaniacal maniacs who decide the people of the world are due for judgment. They carry the guns and the blades and they slaughter their way through life.

A monster is what you make it, but under all the trappings and symbolism, your biggest monster is nearly always yourself. The part of yourself that is capable of doing _anything_ to get what it wants- what it feels it needs.

I have been alive long enough and been through enough, to know this is the truth.

We make our own monsters and we give them power over us. In this way we don't have to feel guilty when the monster runs free. For humans, I think this is simple, because they nearly always allow themselves to die once the beast has well and truly come over them. The body might linger on for a little while, but the human inside has been rotted out by their own twisted fears.

For a Plant, I think it's harder. Mostly because we're harder to kill. I have only myself to base my theory on, but I still believe it to be the truth. It was an easy thing for me to let my anger and disgust with humanity feed into my fear that one day I wouldn't be able to help Vash or that I might hurt someone. I was scared, and being scared made me angry.

In my mind, hell would be never escaping this fear. To never rest and be forever on edge, always angry. Hell was being alone with myself this way. And lo, I wrought what I dreamed.

A human monster can do a lot of damage. A terrible amount. Human serial killers have claimed to have taken hundreds of lives single handedly. By the time they are in a position to admit (to brag is more typical) they are beyond whatever humanity was ever present in them. By the time they are caught or killed, they are monsters.

I killed thousands of humans with a simple string of code. I didn't even have to do more than press a few keys. And I watched their ships crash into the barren desert of Gunsmoke, laughing. I was delighted by the fireworks, and it was only just beginning. By the end of my first year on the surface of the planet, I had tracked down and killed over a hundred more. I was still young and scared that someone- who, I don't know- would catch me and hurt me. The fear made me eager to kill them all the faster.

By the end of my first decade on Gunsmoke, I had lost my brother and tripled my number of kills. There was very little room in my mind for fear or logic; I was abandoned and angry as hell. I knew who to blame (and don't we always?) and I wanted justice.

No, justice isn't right. Because these people, I'll be the first to admit, had no idea what they were being punished for. And I wasn't in a telling mood. I didn't give a damn about justice. What I wanted was blood and a high body count.

I wonder sometimes if humans really do understand when they become monsters. In writing, a man may sit in his mind, watching his body do things in absentminded acknowledgement or in terror over the appalling acts he commits. Is there really a part in the human mind that stays sane enough to realize what they are becoming?

I wonder, because that moment didn't exist for me. I woke up one morning with an idea- a wonderful idea, and the perfect way to start things off. Maybe I wasn't a monster at that point- I notice that the mistakes children make are often excused, even when an adult making the same mistake would be in a horrible amount of trouble. But if I wasn't a monster then, I grew into one, exactly the way a puppy can grow to become a vicious mongrel.

There was never a moment when I thought what I was doing, or what I had done, was wrong. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I still can't exactly say I think I _was_ wrong. Mistaken in my methods, cruel perhaps, but not wrong. At first I was doing this to protect myself and my brother; then I was doing it because I could and it felt wonderful to do. And finally, just as habit always does, it became part of the definition of who I was.

Around the time it had become part of what characterized me, I found a nameless creature in the rubble of a town I had destroyed. That creature was filthy, babbling, and should have died when it caught my attention. When it didn't, I decided I could use it. Him. I named him Legato, something beautiful and strong- why did I give him such a name when I didn't even care for him at the time?

He was perfect for me, but Legato was not as fitting a name as it might seem. As a word, 'legato' is a musical term representing a smooth, unbroken note that is carried for several beats. Legato was very much broken- which is, of course, _why_ he was perfect for me- and he died long before he ought to have.

Human monsters are lucky. They create their hells, loiter in them for a time, and then are caught, killed, or die on their own. There is, in my experience, never a moment for them where they become clear headed and have to face what they are or were. To come to terms with their individual damnation.

Private revolution, the personal world upended, mental interrogation of the status quo, one's eternal proximity to hell- subjects currently near and dear to my heart. Presently, I spend a lot of time pondering the acts that led to now. To being here, alone except for Vash in the next room.

To him, my 'condition' is improving. When I speak of these things to him, he nods in approval of my openness, and my willingness to compare myself to humans. I do not point out that I am, technically, _not_ comparing myself to humans, but instead likening myself to creatures much worse. Maybe he understands this but wishes not to offend me with such blunt phraseology.

Perhaps it is an improvement of sorts, to relate with that which I detest. And I _do_ detest them, to this day. Decades of living alone with my bleeding heart humanist of a brother has done little to quell this abhorrence. I have made progress in my ability to walk among them without having to shed their blood. I have perfected the art of keeping a closed expression when speaking with them. I can even carry a conversation with one if I have had sufficient time alone beforehand. But I still hate them.

It remains difficult to admit that I could have been insane. And if I _was_ that I still might be, albeit in a different way. Insanity- irrational fear or hatred of that which is innocuous or nonexistent- is an easy way to describe my feelings toward the human race.

I am most comfortable when I am by myself or alone with my brother. Yet he insists on bringing his human companions around, and I am unwilling to hole up in my room like a shy child. It has been years since I killed a human, but I know it would be as easy now as it was then. Having Vash nearby helps my rationality, because he is fond of his human friends and I can tap into that feeling even if I can't mimic it myself. It is awkward nonetheless, and I cannot bring myself to actually _touch_ one of them.

Vash knows well enough how I feel, and yet he insists. I think he believes he can find another human I am at ease with, who I find myself enjoying time with. He is unwilling to admit that he took that one person away from me. Fair being fair, I suppose I earned this pain- I took plenty of people from him.

Aside from visiting with humans I loathe and sharing my introspective findings with Vash, I spend a lot of time out in the desert. I have always approved of the desert. I like the stringent qualities of the bright sun and dry sand, the emptiness that is secretly full, the lifelessness teeming with vitality. I can (and do) kneel on a swell of hard-packed sandstone for hours at a time, my fists firm against the gritty ground. Sometimes Vash joins me, but never for long. He calls it 'getting knee-bound' with a funny little smile that tells me he's thinking of someone I killed or who died because of me. I don't think he knows how well I read him.

When I am 'knee-bound', alone in the dryness and heat, I am able to enjoy that rare sense of inner quiet. My eyes cast at the sand, and I can let my mind wander. Most often I end up thinking of my long dead servant. Improperly buried (if buried at all- who knows what might have become of him) and farther away from me than ever. There is a special time near twilight when the suns rest on the edge of the earth, painting the sky every color from bright gold to deep blue. In this fading light, I sometimes imagine things that I know Vash would think of as 'unhealthy', but I relish the thoughts. Blood soaking into the sand, skin paling further in death- I imagine what it would be like to give my life to the desert I crashed us into.

I imagine it would be a good way to go.


End file.
